Better in their words…

Supreme Court accepts Trump’s birthright citizenship case, signaling seismic shifts; and the President dropped a foreign policy paper that is setting the world on fire.

Source: THE DOCTRINE☙ Sunday, December 7, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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Yesterday, the UK Guardian ran a story headlined, “US Supreme Court to decide on legality of Trump birthright citizenship order.” On Friday, the Supremes officially accepted the case, which turns on the meaning of four words in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution (including two prepositions), and the ultimate decision will either shut down one of the most ridiculous immigration scams in history and infuriate the left beyond all imagination, or else double down on self-destructive, virtue-signaling silliness.

Mere hours after President Trump took office, one of the first executive orders he signed banned so-called ‘birthright citizenship,’ the legal doctrine that legal experts on MSNBC refer to as jus soli, which provides that the world’s wretched refuse will get a meal ticket punched if they can deliver a baby within the borders.

Trump’s executive order was also the very first in a long series of Trump orders immediately banned by federal judges. The case became even more famous after it provoked a stern response from the Supreme Court, which slapped down federal courts issuing any more so-called ‘national injunctions’— excepting only class actions. Magically, the judges and activist lawyers waved their lawfare wands, instantly transforming all their cases into class actions, and the beat droned on.

But after Friday, Trump v. Barbara will be argued before the nation’s highest court in the spring, and a ruling is expected by early summer.

Significantly, SCOTUS agreed to consider the case after multiple lower courts —indeed, every single court to take the case (allowing that they represented the country’s most liberal courts)— found his order was downright unconstitutional.

But SCOTUS’s bare agreement to hear the matter reflects a Court willing to reconsider, and even overturn, “consensus” constitutional interpretations. Triggered progressives are already fundraising with a degree of fury and outrage not seen since the Roe v. Wade fracas.

🔥 The 14th Amendment, drafted by Republicans in the Civil War’s final days, declared that everyone “born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” becomes a U.S. citizen. Nobody sane argues that the 14th Amendment was intended to grant citizenship to anyone except the children of freed black slaves. Yet here we are.

If only they had been a tiny bit clearer in the wording.

At the time, during debates over the wording of the 14th Amendment, Senator Jacob Howard “the Duck,” who’d originally drafted the birthright citizenship clause, insisted that Indians would not also become citizens, since they were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S., since they had always been recognized as “sovereign powers,” or “quasi foreign nations.” (At the time, Indians were still scalping pioneers and going on firewater-fueled binges resulting in wooden towns being repeatedly burned to the ground, so the Senators weren’t feeling too generous toward the natives.)

Senator Lyman Trumbull, another key Reconstruction architect, also argued (for the same reason) that the federal government lacked jurisdiction over tribes without their express consent. Just freed slaves.

Thus it was unsurprising when, a few years later, some hooligan tested the Senators’ theories in court and, in Elk v. Wilkins (1884), the Supreme Court logically held that American Indians born in tribal communities were notFourteenth Amendment birthright citizens, since tribal members were considered as belonging to separate sovereign nations and were not fully“subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

You’d think the story would end there. But no.

🔥 Over the years, as waves of pro- and anti-immigration washed over the nation, later cases went the other way when the same logic was applied to citizens of other sovereign nations like China and liberal justices dominated the courts. Meanwhile, Congress passed an astonishing number of immigration laws enacting various rights and exceptions, leading to the present muddled mess, where if a coyote hauls a pregnant mamacita across the border, the entire extended family receives an invitation after she gives birth.

It’s all the result of convoluted virtue-signaling logic so twisted it would confuse a pretzel. Since babies born on this side of the Texas border are citizens, liberals argue, they can’t be deported. Deporting their mothers would turn the babies into orphans, so obviously moms must be allowed to stay too, for fairness. Then, using the same tortured reasoning, it’s equally unfair to force mamacita into single motherhood and into raising her niños by herself, so it’s only fair to also let the rest of her family come to America, to help out with the laundry and groceries, and apply for electronic benefits.

🔥 At some point, despite enduring a series of legal losses that would make most men drown their sorrows, plucky conservative lawyers heroically tried to remind everyone that the four words “subject to the jurisdiction” must mean something more than mere territorial presence, otherwise the phrase would be redundant. And, of course, they dredged up the inconvenient facts about the Amendment’s original intent, and how it always historically excluded people whose allegiance remained primarily to a foreign sovereign, like the Indians.

Therefore, they argued, the Clause should only cover folks fully and permanently subject to U.S. political authority, like freed slaves and lawful permanent residents, but not children of parents who are in the country unlawfully, on temporary visas, or flown in on the Biden immigrant express.

None of this history explains why progressives have gone all-in on birthright citizenship. But the Guardian gave the game away when it explained the potential harms if the Supreme Court does end automatic birthright citizenship:

In other words, in the Guardian’s far-left view, the worst consequence of losing citizenship is losing access to U.S. taxpayer largesse, not loss of any inherent value in being an American. To progressives, citizenship is not about becoming a vital and valued participant in American civic and social life, but rather just about getting their EBT cards on time. Somewhere, Cloward and Piven are laughing.

If the Supreme Court returns to the original intent, it would be one of the most consequential constitutional shifts in modern U.S. history, because it would effectively rewrite who counts as “born American” for the first time since Reconstruction. Not only would it end one of the most powerful magnets for illegal immigration —birth tourism— it would be a once‑in‑a‑generation vindication of conservatives’ understanding of sovereignty and democratic self‑determination— arguably as big as Dobbs (which overturned Roe) in symbolic terms, and in some ways bigger in structural ones.

That the Court has agreed to hear the case at all is a massive win for originalists. The Court could easily have looked the other way, let the case play out in the lower courts, and fended off another political hot potato. Now that the Court has taken the case, a long fuse has been lit, leading right to the oral arguments starting next Spring.

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The big hits kept coming. I doubt any of Trump’s adversaries have a full concept of everything in the pipeline at this point. Time ran a story about the latest blockbuster yesterday, headlined, “Trump’s National Security Strategy Sparks European Backlash Over ‘Far-Right’ Rhetoric.” They really hate this one. Domestic media intentionally ignored it, but foreign media exploded.

Yesterday, President Trump published one of the most remarkable National Security Statements (NSS) in the modern era. The fact that he published one was unremarkable. NSS’s are military/political white papers, and every Administration publishes at least one, sometimes two or three, and some never shut up about it.

But Trump’s NSS —his first— was different. For one thing, Trump’s version ripped Europe a new excretory aperture. We’ll return to that shortly.

The NSS began with a clarion mission statement that was music to MAGA ears: “This document is a roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history,” President Trump wrote in the foreword. “In the years ahead, we will continue to develop every dimension of our national strength—and we will make America safer, richer, freer, greater, and more powerful than ever before.”

That short introduction described exactly what we voted for. Naturally, it made Democrats madder than a wet mule chewing on bumblebees.

Next, the NSS identified the general problem, laying it at the feet of the elite experts who got us into this mess. You could not ask for a better written, more succinct description of the dire peril posed by progressives chasing globalist priorities:

Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest. They overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfare-regulatory-administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex.

They placed hugely misguided and destructive bets on globalism and so-called “free trade” that hollowed out the very middle class and industrial base on which American economic and military preeminence depend.

They allowed allies and partners to offload the cost of their defense onto the American people, and sometimes to suck us into conflicts and controversies central to their interests but peripheral or irrelevant to our own. And they lashed American policy to a network of international institutions, some of which are driven by outright anti-Americanism and many by a transnationalism that explicitly seeks to dissolve individual state sovereignty.

In sum, not only did our elites pursue a fundamentally undesirable and impossible goal, in doing so they undermined the very means necessary to achieve that goal: the character of our nation upon which its power, wealth, and decency were built.

Then it outlined a framework to correct those problems. If I had space, I would post the NSS’s full pages 3-4, titled, “What Do We Want Overall?” Here’s just the very first, short, beautiful paragraph:

First and foremost, we want the continued survival and safety of the United States as an independent, sovereign republic whose government secures the God-given natural rights of its citizens and prioritizes their well-being and interests.

You can’t beat that single-sentence summary.

It described not just foreign policy but also connected global concerns to core domestic objectives. “We want the world’s strongest, most dynamic, most innovative, and most advanced economy,” it said, as well as “the world’s most robust industrial base.” Plus, “We want to remain the world’s most scientifically and technologically advanced and innovative country.” And “Finally, we want the restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health, without which long-term security is impossible.”

Sign me up. It all sounded great, to me. And so you might naturally wonder how all of this uncontroversial goodness could upset anyone.

🚀 In the span of 48 hours, critics have excoriated the NSS as “stunning,” “bizarre,” “extreme,” and “something out of the deranged minds in the Kremlin.” To give you a taste of how it went over with the globalist elite, while he was reading the NSS, former French Ambassador Gérard Aruaud nearly choked on his croissant:

Unsurprisingly, Democrats like Senator Mark Kelly (who clearly doesn’t know when to quit) were just as outraged as the Euroweenies. Headline from Andalou Agency, this morning:

Senator Richard “the Dick” Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said the NSS throws Ukraine under the bus and “forsakes allies,” meaning of course, his élite European buddies:

Specifically, they were outraged that the NSS warned that Europe faces the “prospect of civilizational erasure,” citing migration, censorship and speech restrictions, suppression of political opponents, cratering birthrates, loss of national identity, low self-confidence, dermatitis, and an annoying habit of dipping into America’s wallet whenever they need a snack.

“Should present trends continue,” the NSS soberly warned, Western Europe “will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies.” Ouch.

It further angered progressives when it said the U.S. should actively help improve Europe’s political and social trajectory by supporting its “patriotic European parties,” which “give great cause for optimism.” It referred, of course, to groups that corporate media call “Hitlerian” and that Brussels keeps banning for far-rightedness.

But the worst news of all came when the NSS scolded Europeans, advising them to realize that their Ukrainian ambitions are “unrealistic,” to stop planning a war they can’t possibly win with Russia, to start rebuilding their own countries, and for the love of mustard to quit embracing dictators wearing green sweats.

“Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory,” it summarized primly. Imagine how a teenager must feel when the principal says the school will help him correct his current trajectory.

But most of all, President Trump’s NSS said we should mind our own backyard.

🚀 It’s official; the NSS explicitly called for reviving the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, but with upgrades. As a reminder, Monroe was the original America-firster. He argued the US was fully entitled to protect and safeguard our whole hemisphere —pole to pole, South and North America— from European and Asian meddling. Similarly, the NSS vowed that the U.S. will “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”

Democrats hate this because it smacks of meddling in other countries’ business. Why shouldn’t Venezuela work with China if it wants to? How is that our business? Forever wars are fine in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Just don’t police countries on this side of the pond.

Anyway, the NSS described this part of its security strategy as the “’Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine.” In 1823, Monroe wasn’t worried about threats from China so much as European meddling. But the world is different now. Europe is an incoherent but dangerous mess. And, with major South American countries like Brazil cozying up to Russian and Chinese development deals and financial blocs (like BRICS), Trump’s tweaked corollary brings the Monroe Doctrine current.

Unsurprisingly, the NSS described plans to enlist willing regional partners —including both countries aligned with U.S. “principles and strategy” and those with different values but shared common interests— to help “control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability and security on land and sea.”

Again, in true “America First” fashion, the NSS’s foreign policies were aimed squarely at domestic priorities. Which is why they must be destroyed.

🚀 There’s much more. The NSS clocks in at around 30 pages, but it is worth a read if geopolitics interests you. It’s also a terrific resource for middle-school or high-school kids. The table of contents is simple and straightforward, and it’s all written in plain English and not the usual bureaucratic babble:

As I said before, these types of foreign-policy white papers are a dime-a-dozen, and typically unmemorable and uncontroversial, even if nobody agrees with them. The Cabbage published his lone submission in 2022, and who now remembers any of Biden’s silly plans to win the war in Ukraine and rescue the planet from climate change?

But Trump’s plan is less than 48 hours old, and already the whole world is chattering about it. It’s not that the plan itself threatens anybody; talk is cheap, after all.

The angst stems from elites’ growing worry that Trump can actually pull it off.

The NSS arrived amidst an organized effort to overthrow War Secretary Pete Hegseth, using a jumped-up scandal that most Americans can’t understand beyond soundbites. The Navy tried to kill some narco-terrorists; it got all but two on the first strike, then within minutes fired another missile to finish the job. Now Democrats act outraged, a hypocritical, fake fury that completely ignores Obama’s “double-tap” policy, which was intentionally designed to kill unarmed firemen, paramedics, and wedding guests.

Whatever.

I will leave you with this thought: the timing. Trump’s NSS arrived at a significant inflection point, with the Ukraine war heading into its final lap around the track, the Venezuelan issue emerging into the foreground, the midterm season beginning in earnest, and with the Swamp having been drained to a point where the Administration can finally start to navigate the federal government without being eaten by crocodiles.

In other words, it looks like everything is going according to plan. Next year is shaping up to be even more exciting than 2025. Please ensure that your safety belts remain fastened at all times while the ride is in motion.

Have a blessed Sunday! Thank you, once again, for your continued loyal support. It is more important than ever. Tomorrow, I’m heading back to the airport to return to warmer home climates. I’ll check in with you in the morning.

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